Outside of bittering additions, adding hops during the boil is inefficient as many of the essential oils and positive attributes being sought are lost to heat. Instead, save those hops for whirlpooling or dry hopping.

It has been known as blown, porter and snap malt, but homebrewers know it as brown malt, if they know it at all. Its mellow roast character, cheeky bitterness and acrid finish has warmed the cockles of many an Englishman over the centuries. It was once a malt of choice for many dark brews, especially porters and stouts. However, improvements in malting technology — including the development of pale base malts with better yields and dark specialty malts with more color — led to its decline. And it almost faded into brewing history. Almost. Today, a few maltsters — including Crisp, Thomas Fawcett and Sons, Hugh Baird and Beeston — produce brown malt and many homebrewers are discovering what made this lightly-roasted malt so popular in the past. Brown malt is back.

Popular Searches

Did you ever want to do something just because someone told you it couldn't be done? A comment at a homebrew club meeting sets a homebrewer on a quest to brew an all-grain beer over 20% alcohol by volume.

To brew a great stout, you need to know your dark grains. From roasted barley and roasted malt to chocolate and Carafa malts, how to get the right flavor in your roasty brew. Plus: Guinness and Murphy's stouts cloned.

Extract brewing is not just a simplified form of all-grain brewing. It's a process that has its own set of challenges. Find out what these challenges are -- and how to master them -- without changing your whole brewing setup or spending a lot of extra time on brewday.